Music Steeped in the Wilds of Canada

Kalliopi Monoyios is an independent science illustrator and a certified science geek. She is the illustrator of three popular science books: Neil Shubin's Your Inner Fish and The Universe Within, and Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution is True. Find her at www.kalliopimonoyios.com and @eyeforscience.

Katie McKissick is a former high school biology teacher turned science writer and cartoonist based in Los Angeles, CA. Her first book is called What’s in Your Genes? and will be in bookstores December 2013. She tweets @beatricebiology. Her work can be found at www.beatricebiologist.com.

Kalliopi Monoyios is an independent science illustrator. She has illustrated several popular science books including Neil Shubin's Your Inner Fish and The Universe Within, and Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution is True. Find her at www.kalliopimonoyios.com.
Follow on Twitter @symbiartic.

Eighteen years ago this July, a group of 14 adventurers unloaded tents, gear, food, canoes, and two guitars from the back of a big old bus and loaded them into 7 canoes in a nondescript boat launch outside of Yellowknife, NWT. For the next 47 days, they would paddle against the current, slog through bogs, traverse hummocks and skree as they made their way to and then down the fabled Coppermine River. They would paddle through smoke so thick they couldn’t see the person sitting in their bow, would backtrack a full day’s paddle to retrieve a set of lost tent poles, and would scout rapids from atop a cliff that held a memorial to the unlucky souls who had drowned in the waters below. They watched the trees thin out as they approached the tree line and then disappear altogether as they ventured into the wild open tundra. They caught fish in lakes that have never heard the purr of motors and marveled at the feeling that they might be the only person to have ever stepped on that particular stone. At night, they would sit in the dusky half-dark and talk and sing, letting the foreign human noise wash over the tundra as far as the wind would carry it. How strange it must have sounded to the moss and the willows hugging tight to the ground.

Back then, there was no expectation that these moments would be captured or shared through anything other than static photographs. Instead, the sounds and smells of that adventure were woven deep into the fibers of each of their beings. The memories for the most part lie dormant, but occasionally they percolate to the surface in surprising and refreshing ways.

I felt those memories rush back when I listened to the pair of albums just released by a science-art duo called Predator/Prey. The scientist is a fisheries biologist who dragged his guitar faithfully into the Canadian wilderness every summer leading up to our grand adventure to the Arctic Ocean. The artist is a musician who captures the beauty of Canada’s ecosystem on film. They are Dak de Kerckhove and Adam Phipps, respectively. Their collaboration was itself conceived of on a camping trip in Alberta and is heavily influenced by their love of the natural world. Have a listen and see what it stirs in you:

If you’re wondering where you can go on the kind of adventure described above, check out Camp Wanapitei and their adult tripping counterpart & outfitter, Wanapitei CANOE.

About the Author: Kalliopi Monoyios is an independent science illustrator. She has illustrated several popular science books including Neil Shubin's Your Inner Fish and The Universe Within, and Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution is True. Find her at www.kalliopimonoyios.com.
Follow on Twitter @symbiartic.